For years, all we do is feed. We don’t control what our parents feed us for dinner, we don’t control what they read to us (or don’t read to us) or what they let us watch. We are like jars of wet clay, and we are loaded full with every kind of tale—films; books; TV shows; stories from friends, parents, grandparents. And as we dry, we take the shape of what has been dumped inside of us. When we begin to make our own choices, when we become an active character in our own narratives, all of that soul food is behind us. We might not even remember the stories, but they groomed and molded us while we were still unfired clay.
Even in adults, stories groom instincts, and instincts control loyalties, and loyalties shape choices. But growth is harder for adults.
And then we move beyond just making our own choices. We begin deciding what narrative we will pour (or allow to be poured) into our own small people. We will feed them. Or, far more frequently, others will do it for us.
Souls will be fed and shaped from the inside out. That much is inescapable.
-N.D. Wilson, Death By Living
